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Production

Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric
generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of
unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to
you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food
by means of nothing but physical motions—and you’ll learn that man’s mind is
the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed
on earth.

But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What
strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the
product of man’s capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a
motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the
intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the
incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is
made—before it can be looted or mooched—made by the effort of every honest
man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he
can’t consume more than he has produced.

Whether it’s a symphony or a coal mine, all work is an act of creating and
comes from the same source: from an inviolate capacity to see through one’s own
eyes—which means: the capacity to perform a rational identification—which
means: the capacity to see, to connect and to make what had not been seen,
connected and made before.

Every type of productive work involves a combination of mental and physical
effort: of thought and of physical action to translate that thought into a
material form. The proportion of these two elements varies in different types
of work. At the lowest end of the scale, the mental effort required to perform
unskilled manual labor is minimal. At the other end, what the patent and
copyright laws acknowledge is the paramount role of mental effort in the
production of material values.

The root of production is man’s mind; the mind is an attribute of the
individual and it does not work under orders, controls and compulsion, as
centuries of stagnation have demonstrated. Progress cannot be planned by
government, and it cannot be restricted or retarded; it can only be stopped, as
every statist government has demonstrated.